


It's Alright, We're Doin' Fine

by bucketbarnes (jeviennis)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Complete, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Light Angst, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 22:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3505448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeviennis/pseuds/bucketbarnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tony tries to teach Bucky about modern music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Alright, We're Doin' Fine

**Author's Note:**

> Post-TWS, where Bucky remembers everything and the whole him-going-on-the-run thing is resolved, and mentioned. Tony at this point also knows that the Winter Soldier is responsible for his parents’ deaths.
> 
> Also, the rating is literally only for swearing. Sorry to smut-lovers.
> 
> Comments are super appreciated!

Tony’s lab is comfortably silent when he tells the ceiling, “JARVIS, put my work playlist on. This place needs cheering the hell up.”

The ceiling hums its assent and within seconds, there’s a loud metallic blast of rock music that makes Bucky jump a foot off his ass. Too far, in fact, as the soldering iron that Tony’s currently got buried in the wiring of his arm hits something that it shouldn’t, making Bucky hiss and glare down at the open panel.

“Easy now, Steel Sally, you gotta keep still. Otherwise this’ll turn into a game of Operation, and Pepper and I both know that it usually doesn’t end well.”

Bucky raises his glare to Tony’s eyes and minutely cocks an eyebrow. Tony looks genuinely shocked.

“Operation? Classic board game? A test of focus and precision? No?”

Bucky’s eyebrow gets higher. “No.”

“Well damn, kid. I gotta get you playing for my team. Bet that sniper arm could win me a few bucks off of Clint. Asshole thinks he’s all that just because he can fire an arrow pretty well.”

Bucky sighs like a long-suffering spouse. It’s been seven weeks since he officially moved into the Avengers Tower from the guest bedroom of Steve’s little apartment, and he’s already come to see that Clint and Tony have some kind of epic mini-war at play.

“He can fire an arrow pretty well.” The ‘ _he hit me in the shoulder with an arrow full of sedative after I went on the run and briefly lost what sanity I had left_ ’ goes unsaid. Tony makes a sort of half-laugh in the back of his throat, and goes back to Bucky’s arm. If he’s staring more intently than he was before, Bucky says nothing about it.

There’s another stretch of quiet between them, broken by the music now playing at a respectable volume in the background, when Bucky speaks again.

“So what is that, anyway?”

Tony looks up. “What is what?”

“The music.”

“Oh, the music! That, my uneducated friend, is the musical stylings of AC/DC, the greatest hard rock band to ever grace the face of this earth.”

Bucky nods for a moment, and listens in a bit more intently. “I like it.”

“Really?” Tony’s face has split into the biggest grin going, and Bucky thinks to himself that if music is capable of doing that, he’ll start to listen to more.

“Yeah. You can tell your ceiling to turn it back up, if you like.”

Tony turns his attention back to the open panel in Bucky’s arm, still with the hint of a smirk on his face. “JARVIS, you heard the man.”

“Yes, Mr. Barnes,” chimes a crisp British voice, and then the music gets louder, blaring through the lab. Tony nods his head in time with the drum beat, lips pursed into a pout, and taps out the rhythm with his foot until the song is over. Before the next one starts, he speaks quickly and quietly.

“You can ask him too, you know. You live here now.”

Bucky looks up from where he’d been staring across the room at a vintage-looking car that reminded him of an Expo, two girls on his arm, and a fistful of Steve’s popcorn.

“I know.”

“Why don’t you, then.” It’s not really a question. There’s no inflection because Tony doesn’t really need to hear the answer. It’s quite obvious, but Bucky takes his time answering it anyway.

“I’m not completely comfortable yet.”

Tony puts the soldering iron down on the metal tray next to him, and looks up at Bucky.

“You think Mr. Patriotic Freeze-Pop loved this place when he first arrived?”

“Probably not. Steve’s stubborn as hell.”

“Well yes, he really is, but– but that’s not the point here. He didn’t fall in love with this place at first because he didn’t understand it. Sam, on the other hand? He nearly fainted when he stepped in the foyer.”

Bucky’s brow furrows. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that something this big and shiny and extravagant can be hard to get used to if you don’t understand anything inside it.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Bucky says quietly, looking to the side.

“I know you’re not. _Hey_ – I know that you aren’t. But from what Steve’s told me, your little apartment in Brooklyn was a shithole, and I can’t imagine that HYDRA were keeping you in the champagne freezer of the Ritz.”

There’s a moment where Tony seeks out Bucky’s eyeline, staring at him meaningfully. “It’s tough at first. I get it.”

The conversation feels too much like compassion for Bucky’s liking, and he still feels like Tony shouldn’t be giving him that yet, so he clears his throat and changes the tone.

“Why the fuck is your swimming pool so big, though?” He’s getting better at this social cues lark, he reckons. Tony’s smirk appears on his face again, and as he shuts the panel on Bucky’s arm, he laughs.

“I’m a billionaire. Why in the hell would I have a piss-poor kiddie pool?”

As Bucky stands to leave and walks towards the door, he throws a comment over his shoulder. “I thought it might be _compensation_.”

And if he grins at Tony’s half-offended, half-gleeful, “JARVIS, did you hear what that shitbag just said to me?” – well, no one sees it.

* * *

 Bucky’s sitting on the couch in his apartment, flipping through channels on the TV ( _ridiculously big_ , he thinks to himself) when there’s a knock on the front door, just three gentle taps.

“Steve, it’s open.”

There’s a quiet creak as the door open and shuts, and then Steve hovers at the entrance to the living room, smiling at Bucky.

“What’s got you all happy?”

Steve shakes his head, still smiling, but moves to sit next to Bucky. He waits for Bucky to nod wearily at him before he leans back and falls into the couch cushions.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said you could stop that. It’s pissing me off now.”

“Just want you to have the choice. Remember what Bruce said.”

“Yes, I remember what Bruce said. If I’m not mistaken, I also heard the words ‘I’m not a psychiatrist, did Tony send you up here?’”

Steve throws him a look, one that says ‘ _pipe down, you little shit_ ’, before he smiles again.

“No need to get smart, I’m just trying to help.” Even though it’s said light-heartedly, it still makes Bucky wince.

“I know, I know. Sorry. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.”

“Hmm?”

“Why are you so happy?”

Steve stands, and heads over the mini-fridge under the TV. Bucky’s always thought it was ridiculous to have a fridge in every room, but he can’t deny that a stash of cold beer that never seems to deplete is nice. He takes the bottle that Steve offers him, twists the top off of it, and then looks up at the blond expectantly.

Steve takes a moment before he speaks. “I spoke to Tony today.”

“Fantastic for you.”

“He told me about your conversation in the lab.”

Bucky mentally curses the asshole in his head, but keeps his face relatively neutral. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. He told me that you said you don’t feel entirely comfortable in the tower just yet. Kind of like how I felt when I first got here; like everything’s a bit too luxurious.”

Something between the words Steve’s saying and the smile on his face don’t seem to add up. He frowns. “And you’re happy about that why?”

Steve heads towards the doorway as he says, “Because you had that entire conversation while sitting on a chair that was an exact replica of the one we found in the bank vault.”

There’s a click in Bucky’s head as he puts it together – did he really hold a decent, emotionally beneficial conversation whilst sitting like an experiment in a torture chamber? And did he really not notice?

Steve stands in the doorframe smiling at him. His grin’s almost shit-eating big now, and his eyes are starting to crinkle up with happiness. Bucky’s always been a sucker for Steve’s smile, and now seems to be no exception as he feels the corner of his mouth turn up. Steve answers Bucky’s unspoken question.

“It was Bruce’s idea. JARVIS has been observing you, checking where your heart rate was most normal, where you seemed to be calm. Wherever that is, we’ve been giving you limited exposure to potential triggers, to see if we can negate their effect – try and stop them from creeping you out.”

Bucky wants to be pissed off, wants to shout something about being a lab rat, but all he can do is stare at Steve’s face, heart thumping hopefully in his chest. Is he really getting better? It seems almost too good to be true, too good that he just doesn’t give a shit about the fact that Tony’s ceiling has been spying on him. He swallows, feeling his throat dry out, and his voice comes out like sandpaper.

“Bruce said he wasn’t a psychiatrist.”

Steve laughs, honest-to-God guffaws, before grinning at Bucky. “He’s smart as all hell, though.”

Bucky nods in response, a little awestruck, as Steve strides over to the couch where Bucky is perched on it in shock. He claps Bucky on the shoulder, once, and clinks his bottle to Bucky’s.

“Oh, and Tony told me to tell you to check Channel 538 – it’s the tower’s private channel, and he said he’s set up at a music playlist. Called it ‘the playlist to shit on all other playlists’.”

As Steve exits the room, Bucky is still staring into space with a smile, and he only snaps out of it when he hears the front door click open again.

“Hey asshole, did you just come here to steal my fucking beer?”

There’s a shout of laughter from the hallway, and Steve yells “Clint and Natasha stole all mine at lunchtime!” as the door closes behind him. Bucky huffs out a small laugh, his mind still on the chair in the lab and how refreshingly little he cares about it, before he settles back into the couch cushions and punches in 5-3-8 on the remote control, sipping his beer smugly.

* * *

It’s maybe 8pm when Bucky steps out of the elevator and into the communal living-dining-drinking-a-fuck-ton-of-alcohol area on the top floor of the tower. He checks his pocket for the small black notepad he’d been taking notes in all afternoon, before looking up and surveying the room quickly, internally punching the air when he realises that it wasn’t his knee-jerk reaction to do that first anymore.

He glances at his most recent entry in the notepad briefly, and heads over to the kitchen. Tony appears to be teaching a very unimpressed but somewhat amused Natasha how to flip a pancake, while Sam watches them, chuckling.

Sam sees him first, over Tony’s shoulder, so Bucky holds his index finger to his mouth and makes his footsteps lighter. Sam turns back to the frying pan, trying to hold in a grin.  

Tony’s in the middle of ‘the greatest flip of all time, the flip that will _literally_ resurrect Jesus’ when Bucky leans towards Tony’s ear.

“Thunderstruck!”

“Mother fuc– Oh my fucking god, Barnes, you complete asshole!” The remnants of Tony’s pancake now lie on the floor, not far from where Tony is folded in half, laughing breathlessly. Natasha cackles, and pours some more batter into the saucepan.

A tiny, _tiny_ part of Bucky feels bad, so he grabs Tony’s forearm and hoists him upright again, biting his lip to stop himself laughing. Tony shakes his head at him, and turns to the living area where Steve, Clint and Bruce are all rolling around on the sofas with laughter.

“Steven Grant Rogers– Hey, Captain Spandex, did you just see what your pal did to me?”

Steve’s laugh gets louder as he replies, “Nope, didn’t see a thing.”

“Oh, you better watch yourselves, Tweedle Cryo and Tweedle Seabed. Revenge is going to be ugly.”

“Like your face.” Clint ducks as Tony launches an apple at his head.

“I mean it, grandpas. Get ready.”

Bucky tries to school his amused expression into something resembling innocence as he raises his metal hand in the air like a kid in class. “Sam says that causing unnecessary emotional distress on an army vet solely for sick pleasure is an offence that he believes should be punishable by death.”

Sam sticks his hands up in surrender. “Hey man, I said it was shitty. You made up the part about death.” He looks around. “I want everyone to be very clear on the fact that _I did not say death._ ”

Natasha shrugs. “Potato, po-tah-ta.”

Tony throws his head back as he laughs. “Oh, Robocop, we passed that point long ago. If you can let me poke around in your arm in a lab for two hours, you can deal with me destroying all of your clothes and replacing them with onesie versions of Cap’s suit.” The jest is clear, but there’s something more meaningful in Tony’s eyes, something that looks a little like pride. Bucky smiles briefly at it, before turning back to Tony’s threat.

“It’s a good job you’re not a spy, because you’d be so shitty at it. Telling me literally what to expect as revenge? I didn’t realise 8pm was amateur hour in this place.”

There’s a few shit-stirring ‘oohs’ from the sofas, but Bucky rolls his eyes and walks over to Natasha, where she’s already added five perfectly shaped pancakes to a plate.

“Want me to show you how to really flip a pancake, Natalia?” He leans against the counter with his arm, cocking his head and smirking. Sam slaps his forearm good-naturedly.

“Hey, Barnes, ease off! Fourth date tomorrow, remember?”

Natasha keeps her voice level, but there’s a small smile on her face when she replies. “You’re keeping count, are you?”

Bucky throws a glance at her, and their eyes meet. He nods at her, once, and she takes a breath before looking directly at Sam.

“Um, of course. I don’t want to literally be killed if I forget some kind of anniversary.”

“Good move, dude,” Clint shouts from across the room.

Natasha’s smile grows. “Definitely a good move.”

Bucky walks towards the living area, clapping Sam lightly on the back. He gets halfway across the room before he turns back and looks at him. Sam’s got a smile on his face as he nods.

“Nice one, man. Good contact there,” he says quietly.

Bucky smiles again, and he counts _seven._ Seven smiles today. It must show up on his face that he’s distractedly happy, but none of the others mention it when he sits down, instead choosing to go back to their conversations. He’s thankful for that. It’s nice just to be okay without having to explain it.

Tony sits next to him quickly. “What did you say to me earlier?”

“Hmm?”

“When you made me shit my pants. What did you say to me?”

“Oh– Thunderstruck. That’s the AC/DC song I liked the most.”

Tony’s grin grows. “You listened to my playlist?”

“Yup.” Bucky pops the ‘p’ as he looks around the room, intent on not staring at Tony’s face, which looks like that of a five year-old girl who’s just received a puppy for Christmas.

“Awesome. Okay, so, here’s the deal. I’ve been talking to Brian Johnson, and I’m trying to getting them to do another tour. Here’s what I’m thinking: you, me, private box, rocking out all night.”

Bucky freezes. “Um.”

Tony looks at him expectantly. “Yeah? Are you in or are you in?”

Bucky swallows, suddenly feeling a little feverish. “I, uh. I’m– I’m not that great with crowds.” His voice trails out with embarrassment, and he wrings his hands together. It’s silent between them for a minute, and when he looks up, Tony’s looking thoughtfully at him. He looks back down at his hands.

“Okay, Barnes.” Tony’s is audible only to him, but Bucky notes that there’s no pity in his voice. Just understanding. The quiet in the conversation draws Steve’s attention, and the blond cocks his head with concern from across the space.

Bucky looks up and meets his eyes, shaking his head quickly. Tony must see it too, because quick as anything he claps his hands together and raises his voice.

“So, Cap. I’ve got a suggestion. Did you listen to my playlist?”

Steve’s voice is slow with curiosity. “I thought it was only for Bucky.”

“No! My musical repertoire is for everyone! You’ll love it. Or you should, if I’ve taught you anything over the last couple years.”

Steve’s brow is still furrowed in Bucky’s direction, and Bucky still can’t look up at either of them. Tony rubs his shoulder lightly.

“Anyway, this is my new plan. I call Brian Johnson and say, ‘Hey, Bri, Captain America, Iron Man, and a reformed assassin-slash-ex-World-War-Two-hero want you to bring your boys to my place and give the performance of your life.' I’m talking us, some dinner and some wine, and whole lot of rocking out.”

Under his breath, Tony adds to Bucky, “No matter where we do it, rocking out is happening.”

Bucky half-laughs with relief and looks up at Steve, nodding. Steve’s brow seems to smooth out when Bucky says, “I’m in.”

Tony slaps his hands on his thighs. “Fuck yes. Okay, now. What do I use as leverage to get Johnson to do it?”

Tony’s voice fades out as he lists potential favours, and Bucky takes a breath as he looks around him. It seems a couple of people noticed his minor freak-out, but no one brings it up. Sam gives him a wink from his stool, and Bruce nods kindly at Bucky from his place on the sofa next to Steve. It’s probably the nicest thing they could all do for him.

Taking a breath, he waits for a gap in Tony’s rapid stream of consciousness.

“Hey, Stark. Why don’t you offer Johnson the once-in-a-lifetime gift of you shutting your mouth?”

The room blows up with laughter as Tony stares at him with his mouth open, aghast but amused.

“Rogers, will you control your pet asshole?”

As the laughter fades into good-natured conversation once more, Bucky looks around and smiles. He takes out his notepad quickly to the same page as before, and adds another two lines.

 

**~~||||~~ |||**

**Author's Note:**

> ‘Tweedle Cryo and Tweedle Seabed’ alludes to where Bucky and Steve were respectively frozen – I had the most fun ever coming up with Tony’s nicknames. The title comes from the lyrics of Thunderstruck by AC/DC.


End file.
